Guides
UTM guides for people who ship campaigns
Each article is one question: why tag, when not to, how GA4 groups a medium, how to tag a channel, how to audit a list. Not twenty copies of the same explainer. How we decide that: editorial standards.
Why tagging exists
why
Why track campaign traffic
What you lose when ads and email land as Direct or Unassigned.
do not
When not to use UTMs
Internal links, over-splitting campaigns, and pages that are not media.
meaning
What are UTM parameters?
The required trio, optional tags, and what UTM means.
reconcile
Why ads and GA4 numbers differ
Clicks vs sessions, click IDs, and holes you can actually fix.
How GA4 reads the tags
ga4
GA4 campaign tracking with UTMs
Session vs first user, and why (not set) appears.
unassigned
Fix Unassigned traffic in GA4
Which mediums map to default channel groups.
reports
How to see UTMs in GA4
Traffic acquisition and session campaign reports.
gclid
UTM vs auto-tagging
What gclid covers and what still needs a campaign URL.
How to tag each channel
google ads
UTM parameters for Google Ads
Auto-tagging, ValueTrack, and shared campaign names.
meta
UTM parameters for Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram: paid_social and URL parameters.
UTM parameters for email
Newsletters, flows, and button-level content.
social
UTM parameters for social
Paid vs organic, bios, stories, creator links.
affiliate
UTM parameters for affiliates
Partner source, medium affiliate, shared programs.
offline
Print, packs, and QR codes
Offline pieces that should not open an untagged homepage.
Hygiene and process
rules
UTM tracking best practices
Lowercase, no internal links, mediums that map to channel groups.
mistakes
Common UTM mistakes
Case, spaces, wrong mediums, and a campaign name per creative.
naming
UTM naming conventions
A taxonomy for source, medium, campaign, content, and term.
audit
How to audit campaign URLs
Export live links, decode the list, fix what is spending.
ops
Keep a UTM spreadsheet
One tab, locked mediums, a log that feeds the bulk tool.
terms
UTM glossary
Source vs medium, channel groups, gclid, taxonomy.
faq
UTM FAQ
Short answers for Google Ads, Meta, and GA4.